The Touch of His Paw
by Kat Lee formerly Pirate Turner
Summary: A tender moment leads Belle to make the vow that will change their lives forever.


Title: "The Touch of His Paw"  
Author: Pirate Turner  
Rating: G  
Summary: A tender moment leads Belle to make the vow that will change all their lives forever.  
Disclaimer: Beast, Belle, and all other recognizable characters are all & TM Disney and are used without permission. Everything else is & TM Pirate Turner. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this story, and it is for entertainment purposes only.

She sighed as she reluctantly closed the book. Her slender hand lingered on the leather cover for a moment. She did not want to stop reading for it was a wonderful story of dashing heroes, smart heroines, and fantastical romance, but her head and neck were throbbing and her eyes refused to make sense out of the words any longer. The letters on the page had been stumbling over each other for the last few minutes and were now blurring so madly she could scarcely make out a single coherent word.

She sighed again as she cupped her head in her hands and began to lightly rub her temples. Her father had warned her many times over the years what her immense amount of reading in all sorts of lighting would do to her eyes, but Belle simply could not help herself. She loved to get away into the worlds of fantasy and adventure that she'd never get to see otherwise. She loved meeting each new character and helping them through whatever plight plagued them. She loved reading how he loved her and she him so much that, together, they could surmount any obstacle.

But oh, how her head ached sometimes! It was a small price to pay, she knew, for getting to know so many other lands, people, and animals, but some days it was nearly too much.

Poor sleep also attributed to her headaches, and she honestly could not say that she had had even a single night's worth of good sleep since she had come to the castle. It wasn't because she was still plagued by nightmares of the Beast and what he might do to her. No, her dreams, when she could remember them, were much stranger now. Sometimes it was about her father, but more often, they were strange flights of fantasy that she knew would never come to take place. It wasn't her dreams but the old, hard bed she slept in that left her to awaken many times to sore muscles and aching body parts.

She had not known he was there until she felt hot breath blowing down across her brown hair. She froze in place, her heart leaping into her throat, but quickly dismissed the notion, chiding herself for still letting him scare her. The Beast was not her enemy. He was alone in a world that feared and hated him, and she was his only source of human contact. It was up to her to show him that not every one in the world was wicked and cruel, yet still there were times, like now, that he moved so silently and surprised her so greatly that she couldn't help the way she jumped inside.

She lifted her hands from her head and started to look up at him but froze again when she felt his paw close around the back of her neck. Though his fur was soft, she was again caught with fear for she could see the tips of his razor sharp claws where they stretched out to just in front of her mouth. Her heart hammered in her throat. Her eyes grew as round as the dishes. She tried frantically to speak, to ask what she had done to anger him so, but her breath came out in a squeak.

He froze at the small, frightened sound that creaked out of her fragile throat and closed his eyes for a moment so that none could see the tormented soul that he knew they sometimes betrayed him by reflecting. He opened his eyes again once he felt sure that they would not betray him and glared at Cogsworth and Lumiere, who hid in the shadows of the library. Cogsworth had a tiny hand pressed to his clock face, but Lumiere ushered him on with a wave of his flickering sticks.

They had told him that she was not herself today because of the headache that had been tormenting her all morning. Even his mother had assured him the story was indeed true. But what could he do with such monstrous hands? He could cut her so easily . . . He stared down at the back of her slender neck and gulped. He could hurt her so easily . . . If he moved wrong one time, he could send a claw straight through her flesh and pierce her very throat. He could kill her on the spot!

But he was also the only one with hands big and strong enough that could help her. His own heart hammered in his throat as he slowly stroked her tender flesh. Her sigh gave him the courage to try again, and with each new stroke, he was granted another delighted sigh. He could feel her tenseness easing out slowly, and he continued massaging her neck, his own heartbeat returning to normal at the same slow rate.

As fearful as he was that he might hurt her, Beast was also tingling from another cause. He tried to ignore it, but as she leaned her head back, her eyes closed in sheer ecstasy, he found himself becoming rapidly lost in her. She was so beautiful that it felt almost a sin that one as ugly as he should look upon her beauty. She was so small and fragile that he feared breaking her just by placing a single finger upon her, and she smelled sweeter than anything Cook had ever whipped up to satisfy his ravenous hunger. There was not even one flower in the castle's entire gardens that could come close to being able to be compared with her scent. Her scent was everything pure, good, and sweet, just as her beauty was, just as she herself was . . .

Beast's paw had stilled on the back of Belle's neck, and though he no longer massaged her, just the feeling of his soft fur on her flesh sent such tingles through her that she hoped he would never take his hand off. She wanted to open her eyes and look up into his, but she did not want to scare him. The notion swept through her mind that it was silly of her to think that a pale, weak female like herself could scare such a powerful and strong male, but somehow, her feminine instincts warned her that if she opened her eyes, it would all be over.

He stared down into her closed eyes and realized, for the first time, that she trusted him. She actually _trusted **him**_! He could hurt her so easily, and yet she no longer feared him! He should be angry that a mere woman was not scared off him, but yet that thought alone set him to arguing within himself that Belle was far from being a mere woman or human or anything else for that matter. She was everything good, sweet, and beautiful, everything good and pure, and he did not deserve her or her trust for he was evil! He was a Beast! Sorrow washed through him, and without a sound, he snatched his hand away as quickly as if he had been burned, turned, and fled from the library.

She no longer felt him, but she had not heard him leave. She tentatively called out in a soft voice, "Beast?", and wished, as soon as the name left her mouth, that she knew his real name so that she would not have to call him such a name that he might find derogatory. "Beast?" When still no answer came, she opened her eyes. She had hoped to still find him there, but somewhere deep within, she had also suspected to find him gone.

She sighed. She was alone again, and though the pain from her head and neck were long gone, another pain now haunted her. It was a strange pain, one she had never felt before, and her forehead creased as she searched her mind for a way to explain the ache that swept from her heart all the way through her being. Her shimmering brown eyes turned toward the open door of the library, and she pursed her lips as she thought of how the heroine in the book she was reading had described the loneliness that had haunted her while she had waited for her hero to come rescue her. Yes, that was the way she felt, she realized, but he would never understand that. Her head dropped.

She hung her head in defeat for only a second before lifting her chin back up. She could be just as strong and courageous as the women she read about, she knew. She had lived her entire life waiting for a chance to prove herself as a heroine, and now, at last, she had that opportunity. He _would_ understand, she vowed. Her beloved Beast would one day understand what love felt like and was for she would _make_ him understand it!

**The End**


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